Ae Experiment 3

Suggested for this Experiment

Cell Pattern

CC Glue Gun

CC Light Rays

Congratulations again to everyone who completed After Effects Experiment 2, the results are outstanding. The variety of styles that can be created from just two effects is staggering, and most importantly every one of them is unique and fresh, well done!

For Experiment 3 we are going to stick with After Effects’ Generate category, this time focussing on Cell Pattern, CC Glue Gun and CC Light Rays. Use only those three effects applied to a Solid Layer and don’t use the Brainstorm Tool! Take 30 minutes to explore the effects and post a JPG in the comments. I can’t wait to see your experiments!

Hey John, great fun working this out. Quite quickly went through a few variations, which I guess is the point and the last one was this, which was by far my favourite and by a happy coincidence, the quickest to make! Just shows what you can do with just three effects on a Solid. Fantastic experiment to keep those creative muscles flexing rather than relying on the tied and tested tropes.

Thanks John, also I should have noted the method which was essentially A Cell Pattern to get the Organic look, 2 x Light Rays used to ‘project’ a replication of the cell pattern. 3 x Glue Gun with keyframing position, also keyframing Stroke Width to create the drip sort of look. then finally another two Light rays on each top and bottom shapes to add a kind of nucleus glow inside.

Here’s what I got up to. I did actually start out totally differently to what it end up as. I was going for a mercury look, but this was more striking. A really fun project and it really shows that there is an unlimited amount of things you can do with After Effects. If only we had the time!!

I wasn’t even thinking about the addition of animation and how that would affect the final outcome (which is pretty silly, considering AE is meant to be an animation tool). So here’s virtually the same setup, except I’ve decreased the CC Glue Gun brush size and added a random motion to it.

John, this is a really great idea to experiment with seldom used plugins! I would like to add a bit colour correction to this to really finish it off. Perhaps in future experiments we could add one Curves effect to the end?

Excuse my ignorance but I don’t get or overstand these experiments you have posted here. I thought there would be a tutorial linked to these but apparently I was wrong. Are these variations of this tutorial that you did

/experimenting-in-after-effects/

or is it meant for intermediate to advanced users? I can honestly say I’m in between beginner-to-intermediate since I took a class on it a few years ago and am pretty familiar with it seeing that I use it for post-processing my music videos. I do want to experiment more with AE, esp the audio receptive/real-time graphics aspect of the software. I also know you can do the same with Cinema4D which I do plan to work on soon as well.

These experiments aren’t tutorials but rather an opportunity for you to explore After Effects and Cinema 4D using my personal experiment guidelines, then share your results with the community. Spending time experimenting helps cultivate your own personal, individual style.

Well is there a tutorial I can start with as a base like the link I posted or are there others that you authored that can point me in the right direction? Maybe one from another site (no offense, you have some very cool stuff here that I can’t WAIT to sink my teeth into)………….

There are no tutorials for these experiments, the idea is to explore the software and see where it takes you. If you’re a beginner I recommend checking out Lynda.com, Totaltraining.com and digital-tutors.com.

It’s been great going back through these experiments. I polished the look off in photoshop with a glow, curves, noise and lens blur. Is the point to strictly limit yourself to the effects listed to force creative solutions to make things look good? Or is it more of a jumping off point.

Hello, this is my first try with Motionworks experiments. Here is my simple try. Has one Cell Pattern, one CC Glue Gun and one CC Light Rays.
It is very basic. Though I created a complete video with Experiment 3, + some added extras in the video which include two media footage and some Audio to Keyframes. Check it out here https://youtu.be/TcKeFnNRTko